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Named one of ten most influential thinkers in the world by MIT, Doug Rushkoff asks some seriously big questions on this episode of Curious Minds.

The biggest one is: what if an economy predicated on growth is unsustainable? Growth at companies like General Electric (GE) used to mean jobs for hundreds of thousands of people. That same growth, at companies like Facebook and Google, yields, at most, tens of thousands of jobs. As growth-oriented tech companies absorb more jobs through smarter tech and automation, is this an opportunity to rethink the nature of work, jobs, and the overall economy?

Doug Rushkoff asks us to consider that topic in his latest bestselling book, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity. Rushkoff is a professor of media theory and digital economics at Queens College, CUNY. He is the bestselling author of a dozen other books, including Present Shock, Program or Be Programmed, and Life Inc.

In this episode, we talk about:

Why Doug sees growth as the culprit in our current economy
The unmet promise of technology and the long tail for artists and creatives
How big data analytics reduces unpredictability and, thereby, innovation
Ways more of us can take ownership of the platforms putting us out of work
How it is not the job we want but the meaning, purpose, and material benefits work gives
Money as a verb
How currency tools like blockchain can help us rethink power and authority
Twitter as a textbook case of tech success but growth company failure
How digital distributism can trump digital industrialism
The shift from tech as energizing to energy sucking

Ruskhoff also talks about how he thinks about technology use in his own life, including which tools he chooses to use and why.

What is a definitive standard for Biblical interpretation? Our guest is Dr. Craig Carter. He’s professor of theology at Tyndale University College and Seminary, and his most recent book—Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition: Recovering the Genius of Premodern Exegesis— is a robust defense of bible interpretation grounded in the Trinitarian theology of the Nicene tradition.

Dr. Carter walks us through the exegetical process that defined the orthodoxy we observe today. We’ll consider several historical figures, including Thomas Aquinas, and such intriguing subjects as Christian Platonism.

Tune in for this compelling conversation, and discover whether Bible interpretation is a task for scholars only. You may be surprised by what Dr. Carter’s has to say!

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.In 1840 a young Danish girl called Regine Olsen got engaged to her sweetheart – a modish and clever young man called Søren Kierkegaard. The two were deeply in love but soon the husband to be began to have doubts. He worried that he couldn’t make Regine happy and stay true to himself and his dreams of philosophy. It was a terrible dilemma, but Kierkegaard broke off the engagement – a decision from which neither he nor his fiancée fully recovered. This unhappy episode has become emblematic of the life and thought of Søren Kierkegaard - a philosopher who confronted the painful choices in life and who understood the darker modes of human existence. Yet Kierkegaard is much more than the gloomy Dane of reputation. A thinker of wit and elegance, his ability to live with paradox and his desire to think about individuals as free have given him great purchase in the modern world and he is known as the father of Existentialism.With Jonathan Rée, Visiting Professor at Roehampton University and the Royal College of Art; Clare Carlisle, Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool; John Lippitt, Professor of Ethics and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Hertfordshire.

Is today’s liberalism still the enlightenment ideal of free thought and individual rights? Or is it just economic and sexual liberty – the freedom to shop and shag, you might say?

And has religion surrendered to this new ideology?

Patrick Deneen’s book, Why Liberalism Failed, has been a surprise best-seller in the US, propelled to the top of the chart because former president Barack Obama said it was on his summer reading list.

Patrick’s a political scientist at Notre Dame University in Indiana. As he was finishing his book, he began asking if liberalism’s greatest failure was the unintended creation of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Marco Arment, developer of podcast app Overcast, joins Lex on the Wolf Den. Lex and Marco discuss pretty much everything going on in podcasting today. The two debate the technical complications of dynamic ad insertion and how it affects both podcasters and podcast apps. The two also discuss Marco’s history with Midroll in its early days, and theorize what might happen if Apple ever exited the podcast space.

There’s a popular perception when it comes to religion in Australia that ‘Believers’ are in one corner, and Atheists are in the other.

Polar opposites that tend to shout each other down in the public sphere.

But The Spirit of Things challenges that image by exploring the complicated relationship between Atheism and Christianity.

Dr David Newheiser from the Australian Catholic University is the leader of an international project called Atheism and Christianity: Moving Past Polemic. He tells us how Christians and Atheists aren’t as diametrically opposed as people think. And, he also discusses the diversity of Atheism and how the movement emerged from Christianity itself.

But first, we’re joined by Foreign Editor of The Australian, Greg Sheridan, who discusses his new book God is Good for You: A Defence of Christianity in Troubled Times.

He argues that without the moral and ethical foundation that Christianity has provided in the West, the cruel and oppressive atheistic regimes will degrade what it means to be human.

He also discusses what has contributed to the decline of faith, what religion means to some of our politicians, and why the biblical Book of Ruth holds a special place in his heart.

This week, I sat down for an hour-long interview with the Yale Privacy Lab’s Sean O’Brien (MP3); Sean is a frequent Boing Boing contributor and I was honored that he invited me to be his guest on the very first episode of the Lab’s new podcast. As you might imagine, Sean had some sophisticated —…

John Swinton is a Scottish theologian and founder of the University of Aberdeen’s Centre for Spirituality, Health and Disability. After years of work as a mental health nurse, John became an academic in order to process all that he’d learnt. And my word has he learnt a lot! His book Dementia: Living in the Memories of God, and Becoming Friends of Time are packed full of fascinating and vital insights about what we must learn from people with disabilities about what it means to be human and a disciple of Jesus.